


I just wanna be your shadow

by colonelcatastrophe



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gen, Multi, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 03:39:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4464038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colonelcatastrophe/pseuds/colonelcatastrophe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Noah is forgetting who he was, and even what it was like to be alive. Then he finds Gansey, and everything changes. </p><p>[Each chapter will explore Noah's connection to each of the Raven Boys + Blue, because there's not enough Noah fanfic in this world. Character tags will be added as I write more.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Noah & Gansey

**Author's Note:**

> All of these lovely characters belong to Maggie Stiefvater. Title is from "Be Your Shadow" by the Wombats.

Noah Czerny floats through Henrietta, a ghost haunted by his own past. Years have passed since he died, and yet nothing has changed. He doesn’t want to think about the person he’d been, but if he doesn’t, who will remember him? His family has moved on, and his body has already been left to rot. Soon, no one in town will know or care who Noah Czerny was.

Sometimes he puts facts about himself on repeat in his mind, just to make sure he’s at least remembered by himself. You’re Noah Czerny. You loved ice cream, and skateboarding, and chemistry. You had a cat named Echo who only squeaked when she tried to growl. You played guitar terribly but your song lyrics weren’t half bad. Your best friend was a bastard who murdered you in cold blood. (That part, he doesn’t have to worry about forgetting.)

As the years go on, these truths fade into the distance. He forgets how ice cream tasted like, or even what it felt like to be cold. Did he ever really know how to skate, or did he just envy his classmates’ ability to do tricks on their own? What happened to his cat since he’s been gone? Did she ever learn how to roar properly? Or did he just imagine her in the first place? Nothing in this town holds him down anymore, not even his own memories. It becomes hard to materialize. He only appears once in a blue moon, lost and confused, unsure of how he got to this place on the side of the road or this tree in the middle of a clearing. Unsure of why he hasn’t disappeared completely yet.

At this point, he doesn’t think he would care if he did.

But one day, he finds himself on a vaguely familiar sidewalk, staring at a boy in an Aglionby sweater, his hair tousled and his eyes bright with the whisper of a new idea. There’s something almost hypnotic about this boy that draws Noah in. After following him at a distance for a few weeks, Noah still doesn’t understand why. He’s charismatic, that’s for sure, and passionate. Criticism rolls off of him like rain on a waterproof canvas, and Noah can’t imagine any force in the world powerful enough to dull his ambition to learn, to search for the magic within the city limits, to find whatever it is that he’s looking for with such diligence. But nothing explains the invisible thread that ties Noah to his presence.

He follows the boy to school, staring at him through the familiar windows of Aglionby Academy as he sits in class, hiding in the periphery of the trees at the edge of campus during lunch hour, mesmerized by the boy’s words and beliefs. He traces the boy’s route home to the abandoned warehouse where he lives, though he dares not go in. After dark, he looks up at the lighted windows of the second floor, muffled voices from inside cutting through the silence of the night. Whenever he strays too far from the boy’s presence, it’s never long before Noah finds himself seeking the path back to the boy’s classrooms, or his orange Camero, or the lot around the warehouse. He rarely goes a day without seeing the boy now. It almost gives him a purpose again. Follow the boy, watch over him, try to discover _why_.

And then one day, as the boy is sitting on a bench in the park, studying his ever-present journal, he turns. Gansey, his name is. That’s what the other schoolboys call him. Gansey turns, and looks Noah right in the eyes. “You’ve been following me.”

Noah can’t breathe. Then he remembers that he doesn’t have to. Still, he is too surprised to protest. This boy sees him. How? No one has seen him in almost seven years, but this boy sees him, and maybe this explains why Noah was drawn to him, but it still doesn’t explain why out of all of the people in Henrietta, Noah would find himself attached to _this_ one. “Yes,” he says simply, eyes wide and unblinking.

“Why?”

Noah can only shrug. No words would be able to convey his answer properly. _I’m following you because we’re connected somehow, though I don’t know why. I’m following you because you confuse me. I’m following you because your optimism is strangely endearing. I’m following you because in watching you, I can almost remember what it’s like to care, to be alive._

How long has Gansey known he was there? All this time? He expects to get told off, to be scolded. He doesn’t think that he could bear to endure his half-existence anymore if Gansey tells him to leave. He prepares for the worst.

Instead, he’s asked one simple question.

“Who are you, then?”

“Noah.” The word feels strange in his mouth, like he’s telling a lie. But he doesn’t want to lie to Gansey, so he says it again, just to make sure. “Noah.”

Gansey scoots over towards the edge of the bench, making room before turning his full attention back to the chaotic mess of illegible scribbles in his journal.

“Well, Noah, what do you know about Welsh kings?”


	2. Noah & Monmouth

Two weeks into his tentative friendship with Gansey, Noah follows him home to Monmouth, riding shotgun in the Pig this time, his soft voice laughing as Gansey recounts a story about his exhilarating adventures at Dollar City earlier that day (“Everything’s a dollar, can you _imagine_?”). Gansey talks more than Noah does, but then again, Noah was always quiet, even when he was alive. He never minds being Gansey’s prime audience for stories, rants, theories, or anything else he needs to get out. Noah is sure that Gansey would just end up talking to himself if no one else was there, but with Noah beside him, he tends to stop every few sentences and look over for Noah’s reaction. Noah has gotten much better at appropriately schooling his facial features to make sure Gansey knows his tales are appreciated. It’s the least he can do, for being invited to the conversation. 

They pull into the lot at Monmouth and hop out of the Camero, the locks clicking behind them. Usually, Gansey heads inside alone, as though he’s forgotten all about Noah once he steps too far away. Or else he turns around and realizes that Noah’s gone, and doesn’t question it in the slightest. Noah never strays far, just out of Gansey’s line of sight, until he’s safe inside. But today, when Gansey moves towards the door, Noah prepares to go as always, but is stopped by his friend’s voice. “Aren’t you coming?” As soon as Gansey’s spoken, he turns back to the door and heads inside, clearly expecting to be followed. 

This is a problem. 

Noah’s never imagined he could actually go _into_ the warehouse. The building has been a sacred place to him for so long that Noah’s almost afraid to step inside. He’s not worried about himself as much as he’s worried about what his presence might do to the chaotically constructed life that Gansey’s built for himself here. 

Yet Gansey expected him to follow, and Noah can’t fathom disappointing him. So he carefully steps over the threshhold into Monmouth Manufacturing. Inside, it’s… an abandoned warehouse. Exactly as one would expect an abandoned warehouse to look. The whole of the interior is gutted, with only concrete pillars towering up to the ceiling, a good twenty or thirty feet above Noah’s head. An unidentifiable pile of rubble is piled up in the corner, but nothing else salvageable remains. The concrete floors are covered in dirt and dust and debris, with a clearly worn path leading over to the stairs that Gansey is already climbing. _This_ is where Gansey lives? It doesn’t match what Noah’s seen, and as he heads up the stairs too, he struggles to match this place with his understanding of Richard Gansey III. 

The second floor makes much more sense, really. 

The first thing he notices after Gansey flips on the lights are the boxes and boxes piled up against the walls, some open and some covered, some labelled and some not. Noah realizes that this must be where Gansey keeps all of his notes and research that he’s always talking about. The remaining wall space not taken up by boxes is covered in bookshelves full of books, though there are just as many books scattered in small piles across the floor. Hardly any of the brick walls or concrete floors are visible. It’s very _full,_ and even though the boxes and books are aged, they’re clearly well used and loved. The air isn’t stale here like it is downstairs - it’s electric. 

The space in the middle of the floor is mostly open, with a distinct living space in the far corner. Noah assumes that’s Gansey’s. He follows Gansey towards it, stopping to crouch down and examine the rubbish littering the floor. With a closer glance, he realizes that it’s not rubbish at all - it’s cardboard pieces meticulously cut and colored, pieces that make buildings, and roads, and trees. A small model of a town, seemingly to scale, spreading out from the bed to the middle of the room. “It’s Henrietta,” Noah says aloud, surprised. 

“Sometimes I can’t sleep.” 

Noah continues walking around, taking in the space as Gansey collapses in a heap of limbs on his bed, already digging into the ancient books that are piled half-opened on the floor next to him. On the other end of the room from Gansey’s bed is a makeshift kitchen, a stove and a refrigerator precariously hooked into the electric panel open on the wall next to an industrial-sized sink. Nearby, there’s a few mismatched cupboards that Noah guesses Gansey bought for function rather than for style. A few tables also take up some of the open area in the middle of the floor, though they’re covered with a combination of more books, dirty clothes, and used coffee mugs. Clearly no one cares to use them for their actual table-like function. 

Other, smaller rooms are off to the side of the main area. Bedrooms, or bathrooms, maybe. Gansey looks up to see Noah peering into one. “Ronan’s out, only God knows where.” 

“Oh.” Right, the other voice that he’d often heard floating down from the windows of the building when he was still a stalker in the darkness instead of an apparently trusted friend. Ronan Lynch, another Aglionby student. Gansey had mentioned him before, that he was helping to track down Glendower. 

“You turning in early, or do you want to help me with some of this? I think if we cross-reference these two maps, we’ll be able to solve that problem I mentioned earlier, about the directional difference between Bower’s mission in ‘65 and the sketch I found last week…” Gansey spreads out the two aforementioned maps on his bed, shoving off everything else in the process. 

Noah heads over and moves to sit cross-legged on the end, in the small space that’s left on the bed. He doesn’t know much about Glendower, or magic, or even this town. But maybe this is what he was meant to do: help Gansey find his king. Maybe that’s why they’re connected. And at the very least, Noah _wants_ to help him, even if there’s no real purpose. Because Gansey isn’t just some boy that he’s been following from afar anymore. He’s Noah’s _friend_ now, and he hasn’t had a friend in such a long time, and his friend thinks he can _contribute,_ and even when Noah was _alive_ no one really thought that. And if he was ever going to make a difference, he wanted it to be in this no-longer-abandoned warehouse so full of energy and knowledge and unanswered questions. He wants to be tied to this place as much as he is to Gansey himself. And maybe he already is, since Gansey is also tied to Monmouth, and Glendower, and the very heart of Henrietta. 

So Noah leans in and gives it a try. He starts to look at the earlier map, the one that’s yellowed with age and discolored ink, then the one that’s been newly-acquired. He’s not even sure what these are maps of, because they’re clearly made for different reasons, but slowly a pattern begins to make itself known. “Do you think that maybe, if you turn it like this…” He reaches out to spin the map slightly clockwise, safe in the knowledge that in Gansey’s presence there’s no risk of his fingers fading through the paper. 

Gansey hums. “Maybe. Wait, no, turn it the other way, I think you might be onto something.” They move closer, heads bent over the papers both ancient and new, enthralled by the possibilities presented underneath their hands. This, Noah realizes, is what he’s been waiting his whole life - and death - for. To finally be part of something bigger than himself. 

“What?” Gansey stops mid-rant to look up at Noah, confused by his unexplainable grin. 

“Nothing.” But Noah’s grin doesn’t dim, not even when Gansey falls asleep four hours later, mid-sentence. Noah gently pulls the map out from underneath him so that it won’t get creased, and takes the other one from his lightly clenched fist, setting them both on the ground next to the bed. 

He should go, really.

Instead, he wanders into one of the side rooms, this one empty except for a neatly-made bed. A guest room, maybe? Though what guests Gansey could have that wouldn’t be frightened off by the cacophony of the place, Noah has no idea. He chuckles softly to himself at the idea. There’s a window in the tiny room as well, and Noah steps up to the glass, careful to stay far enough away to make any kind of reflection. 

So this is what it looks like, he thinks, from the window above instead of from the ground below. 

He remains there, motionless, for the rest of the night, staring out contentedly at the cloud-covered moon and tracing its motion in the sky until Gansey stumbles awake the next morning, ready to continue on his quest with Noah by his side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next - Noah meets Ronan and has a mini-crisis because, wait, does Gansey know that he's actually dead?

**Author's Note:**

> Comments? Critique? Spelling errors? Let me know. xx
> 
> Feel free to find me on tumblr @colonel-catastrophe, if you like.


End file.
